Lay me down and whisper (your quiet violence)
by The Readers Muse
Summary: Travis made love like he taught class. Like a slow building crescendo that stayed steady and dependable all the way to the climax. Hung high and proud on the meaning of it – the feeling – each and every time rather than focusing on the quick score.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own AMC's "Fear The Walking Dead" or any of its characters, wishful thinking aside.

 **Authors Note #1:** I needed a little something-something after the first two episodes. And because Travis and Madison deserve all the love.

 **Warnings:** ***** Contains: spoilers for 1x1 & 1x02 & the future episodes promos and sneak peaks we have been shown, adult content, adult language, sexual content, rough/life affirming sex, angst, romance, drama, emotional issues stemming from: trauma/disaster situations.

 **Lay me down and whisper (your quiet violence)**

Travis made love like he taught class. Like a slow building crescendo that stayed steady and dependable all the way to the climax. Hung high and proud on the meaning of it – _the feeling_ – each and every time rather than focusing on the quick score.

It was the kind of confidence that maturity and experience shaped. Showing the degree of comfort he had within his own skin as he played her clean and sure – making her shudder and break apart with his fingers and tongue. Yet still managing to take everything he wanted for himself in the process. Competence was a heady thing, she realized. Enough that it had her joking, on and off, before all this, that he'd probably ruined her for anyone else.

He was gentle. _Unharsh_. Patient. Everything her mind told her she didn't deserve only to find it being proved untrue almost daily. There were no lies between them when they were like this. When he was moving between her thighs, panting her name into the snarl of her nape as she moved with him. The press of her feet digging into the small of his back as she pulled him closer – needing him.

It was always a slow build. _A slow burn._ His own personal brand of slow and steady to win the race. Aiming to cherish and covet rather than take apart and remake. It drove her wild, mostly in a good way. Because the truth was, loving Travis was like loving a smoldering bed of barely lit coals. All that strength, all that focus barely tamed and inches from being let out. It did something to her. The possibility. The knowledge that there was a part of him he held back. Preferring to think of her as breakable rather than practically _made_ for it.

Her life had been just violent enough to love that about him.

Knowing if she ever asked, he'd try to find a way to give it to her.

Whatever she wanted.

She knew he'd at least try.

And at the end of the day, that was everything.

* * *

Only this time, when they found each other in the safe zone after the chaos of the city, it was different. This time he kissed her with a growl and gritted teeth. It was an angry, desperate sound that built in the back of his throat as he caught her in the tiny little room they'd been allotted. Slamming the army cot out of the way as he cupped her chin and used his teeth to tell her how much he'd missed her.

Her shirt ripped – hems stretching - when he dragged it off her. Feeling the whip-lash as he yanked her in and whispered nonsense into her hair, mouthing her name into that spot just below her right ear. One hand already working its way into her pants, making her arch when he dragged the curl of his finger over her mound. Slicking underwear to skin, making it catch and rub before he slipped a finger in - then another – not giving her time to adjust as she tangled her fingers in the belt loops of his jeans. Strangling sounds she didn't want her children to hear as she tugged at his zipper, needing to feel his skin against her. The firm length of him grinding, threatening to rub her raw before they'd even started.

"Travis, just-"

He slid into her with a groan. Hitching her up - wide palms under her thighs – the same time as the long, tantalizing stretch had him bottoming out brutally fast and deliciously unexpected. She didn't even think twice about it when she sunk her teeth into the flare of his shoulder. Feeling like it spoke for everything she couldn't find the breath to say as he shunted his hips and expected her to just take it.

Words like: _too much and finally just enough._

Words like: _yes and please and fuck you and oh-_

His fingers dug into her back like claws as he moved her up and down. Encouraging her to pick up her own share, chasing his pleasure ruthlessly. Lips stalking hers every time she tried to pull away to breathe. Violence on his breath as he worked himself deeper. Snapping and jerking inside her like he was trying to lose himself in slick folds and pliable flesh.

He took her like he _needed_ her.

Not like he wanted her.

He made love to her like she was everything as his head bowed low. Tucking into his chin as dark, four day old stubble rasped against the peaks of her breasts. Pace searing and fastly devastating as she reached between them and got herself off. Fingers slick with her own juices as she soaked him through, so wet she could hear it when he bit off a curse and widened his stance, leaning her up against the wall so that he could power up. Giving him something to crush her against as their next kiss dripped blood.

" _Come on_ ," he hissed, angry again. Not at her, but at the world or maybe even himself. A combination of what he'd seen and what he'd been forced to do. What he'd been forced to watch other people do – do to each other, even themselves. She wanted to ask, but heat was already flushing underneath her skin. Making her moan and writhe as much as he'd let her as his hand knotted itself in her hair and _pulled_.

It wasn't bad or good, just different.

 _More._

Like the physical representation of everything that'd happened since the last day. That last normal day. Before the phone call from the hospital and the reports of a virus were just that _\- a virus_. A superbug knock-off of the common cold and no one was dying and bleeding or getting sick. Before the sound of sirens and screams became more common place than laughter and the obnoxious smack of hurried kisses before work. Before she had even thought that her day would end with caving in her boss' skull with a fire extinguisher and raiding the lock-up to keep her own son from heart-failure.

"Oh- _oh god_ ," he rasped, one hand slamming flat-palmed across the wall beside her head as his spine curved – still hot and hard inside her as he thrusted up - once, twice - before freezing. Finding her lips as he kissed her slow, coming down in inches as the fingers biting into her thighs trembled and the adrenaline and whatever the hell he'd been riding on before he'd cornered her started to ebb away.

Her head hit the wall with a thump, pulling in deep lungfuls of air like she was starving for it. Dull and echoing through the drywall and thin plasterboard as the crush of camp life carried on just outside. It didn't take much coaxing for her arms to wrap around his neck, bringing him back down to her as his bare chest rose and fell against hers. Letting her hand – the same one slick and pleasure-streaked with her own release – smear down to matt the trail of dark hairs that crowned him. Humming under her breath as the rhythm gradually grounded them both.

They rediscovered each other as he pulled away a fraction and looked down at her. Salting the air with that _oh so_ familiar brand of the concern she was already used to negating. Tapping pointedly at his lips to stop the words before they could start as they breathed into the unsteady silence.

Change seemed to be inevitable now. No matter who you were or where you looked, these days everything was different. _Devolving._ She supposed it made a strange a sort of sense at the end of the day that _this_ , what people shared under the cover of darkness, would change right along with it.

"Jesus," he muttered, running a tentative hand down the slope of her jaw, softening the echoes of harsh hands and biting nails while meanwhile she was immortalizing them. Wanting to remember as the ghost of a chuckle worked its way up her throat. Sobering only when she realized he was touching her now like he was afraid of his welcome - unsure. "Are you alright? I didn't-"

"I'm fine," she murmured, smiling more for him than anything as she carded a hand through his hair and scraped her nails down his sides in that way he liked. He shivered against her, feeling it like an emotion made flesh as he let her down slowly, gentling her until she was standing – wobbly – on her own two feet. Holding each other for support as the shadows made a mockery of the conflicted expression on his face.

It was a lie.

Of course it was.

He knew that.

But it wasn't a lie about what had just happened. And for now, that was all that mattered. Knowing that come morning she would rediscover him – _the old him, the familiar him, the gentle him_ \- in the body sleeping next to her and they would be okay. At least for a little while.

* * *

"For a moment there I didn't think I would see you again," he confided later, letting the truth work itself free as the sound of the others sleeping – curled close like matchsticks in the drafty hall – gave the moment a pulse. Reminding her, yet again that they were still breathing. Still alive. _Still whole._

"I know the feeling," she murmured, the hint of a smile curling at the corners as a single tear made tracks down her cheek. Hiding it under the cover of the rough, canvas blanket they'd been issued when they'd found their way here. The cotton lining about as hard as the line of the woman's mouth when the desk Sargent had shoved a care package into her arms and left them standing, shell-shocked in the middle of a milling crush of half-panicked people.

Hating how weak it made her feel as it trickle-trailed downward. Telling herself she felt better – safer – wrapped up in his strong arms despite the fact that they were shaking. All that leanly corded muscle trembling around her as he breathed her in like she was the thing he was counting on to be strong.

Strong for each other. Strong for the kids. Strong for everything that faced them down the line as they clung to each other and tried to pretend – at least one night – that the whole world wasn't ending around them.

* * *

 **A/N:** Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.


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